


Light That Midnight Oil, Baby

by credoimprobus



Category: Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Missing Scene, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 10:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2847128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/credoimprobus/pseuds/credoimprobus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Joey invited Terri to stay as long as she wants, she couldn't have dared hope for this outcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light That Midnight Oil, Baby

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dr_zook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dr_zook/gifts).



Joey is woken by another dream, and lies listening to her too-fast heartbeat for a minute before she sighs, throwing the covers off and getting up to walk off the lingering sense of unreality. When she exits her bedroom to get some water, she finds Terri propped up on the couch in spite of the hour, the girl flipping through one of Joey's glossy coffee table books with a shrinking cigarette dangling between her fingers.

"Trouble sleeping?" Joey asks.

Terri looks up, her expression turning guilty. "Sorry, I'm kind of a night owl. I didn't wake you up, did I?"

"No, no, it's fine."

Terri drops the book off her lap, and shifts to tuck her legs in beside her, implicitly inviting Joey to join her by making room for her. She takes a drag from her cigarette, her eyes flicking down along Joey and back up again. "Man, that's real pretty," Terri comments after she exhales the smoke, and it takes Joey a second to realise she's talking about her nightgown. "You look like a Gothic heroine or some shit."

"Oh," Joey says and laughs a little, runs her hands nervously down the front of the gown. Terri looking at her like that has left her kind of flustered, even with the perfectly innocent explanation. Joey hesitates another moment before she walks over to the couch, and sits down a polite distance from Terri, trying not to pay attention to the smooth legs on display below the oversized shirt that's all Terri's wearing; those long, shapely limbs have been awfully distracting the last days, and aren't getting any less so with prolonged exposure, either.

Terri's looking at her again, the way she contemplatively pulls her lower lip in between her teeth as distracting as her legs. It sets Joey's stomach fluttering even more, but it also gives her the impression Terri wants to say something, so she prompts gently, "What?"

The question breaks Terri out of her momentary stillness, her familiar nervous energy flowing back into her. "Um, I just..." she starts, and twists around to stub out her cigarette in the ashtray. "I wanna thank you for letting me stay."

"You already did," Joey says, crinkling her eyes at her in friendly amusement.

"Yeah, but I wanna thank you again. It's the nicest thing someone's done for me in a long time, you know?"

Joey smiles, and reaches over to place her hand over Terri's, for just a second. "Then I'd say it's well past time that someone was nice to you."

Terri casts her eyes down at that and grins, hair falling into her face. Joey's fingers itch to brush the dark strands aside, tuck them behind Terri's ear, and she's still fighting the inappropriate impulse when Terri looks back up at her, her lips pressing together in sudden determination. A heartbeat later Terri's shuffling across the couch to her, and Joey wonders for a dizzy moment if she's actually still dreaming, safe and snug in her bed, when Terri straddles her and leans forward to kiss her.

Joey sighs and lets herself sink into the kiss, against her better judgement: she knows she should stop Terri, push her away, that it would be wrong to take advantage of the girl's gratitude this way, but she's been wanting this deep down since Terri walked into her apartment and made herself at home. After the days she's spent trying to quell her growing attraction, she's finding it far too hard right now to deny herself this indulgence.

"Terri..." she finally gets out, mumbled reluctantly against Terri's lips. "You don't need to do this. I didn't invite you to stay longer just so you'd owe me something."

Terri stiffens, and her eyes are shadowed with rejection when she draws back. "Okay, shit, I get it. You don't want it. Don't want _me_."

"No, Terri, that's not--" Joey denies quickly, her hands catching reflexively at Terri's waist to stop her pulling away further. "That's not it at all," she continues, and laughs a little desperately. " _God_ knows that's not it. But I wouldn't want you to do anything just because you feel you have to."

Terri meets her eyes warily, as if she's not sure if she can trust Joey's assurances, but wants to. "Yeah?" she asks, a hint of defiance in her voice. It's rather more pronounced, her chin jutting up in challenge, when she continues, "So who says I'm not doing it 'cause I want to, huh?"

Joey laughs in breathless disbelief, because it's more than she could have hoped for. "If that's really the case, then... I'm not going to do anything to stop you."

"Good," Terri says, and slides up closer along Joey's lap again. "I just hope you don't care that I haven't, you know, done this much before," she adds, a self-deprecating half-smile tugging at her mouth. "I mean, not like, screwing, obviously, but... this."

Joey smiles at her. "That's okay. I have," she says, and pulls Terri in for a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> True confessions: I wanted fic for these two so, so badly way back when I first saw this movie, and then in the intervening 10-something years I kind of forgot about it. So thank you, recipient, for reminding me of their glorious femslashiness, and giving me the excuse to write them myself!


End file.
